***** - Excellent
**** - Good
*** - Okay
** - Bad
* - Terrible
+ - Half-star
My Sparkling Misfortune
(The Lakeland Knight series, Volume 1)
Laura Lond and Alla Alekseyeva
Amazon Digital Services
Fiction, YA Fantasy
***+
DESCRIPTION: No man would ever accuse Lord Arkus of heroism - at least, none who live to tell the tale. Clever, devious, greedy, and ruthless, Arkus has made a
reputation as one of the leading villains in the land, bane of prince and knight and goodly folk of all stripes. But even among villains exists a certain code of honor -
which is why, when Prince Kellemar (normally the heroic type) proposed a temporary pooling of resources to deal with a shared threat, Arkus took him at his word. Unfortunately,
while villains may have honor, heroic princes evidently do not. The deal was a trap, one that nearly cost Arkus his life. Barely escaping, losing his castle and his most
trusted minions, he schemes vengeance in exile... but he cannot do evil alone. He needs a supernatural servant. And he knows just where - and how - to ensare one.
But Arkus makes a vital mistake: the spirit he traps isn't evil. It's a sparkling, notorious companion of heroes and do-gooders. And it seems to suffer from the delusion that
a hero's heart hides beneath his villainous skin.
It's going to be a long and painful road to vengeance. Or redemption. Whichever Arkus reaches first... assuming the sparkling hasn't driven him crazy before he gets there.
REVIEW: As one might expect, this is a lighthearted tale, a fun play on fantasy convention. The world isn't especially deep or distinctive, and the characters aren't
startlingly original, but both did their job and held my interest for the length of the book. It reads fast and has some fun moments; but for the ending, which turns
into a cliffhanger, it would've rated four stars. Unfortunately, I felt a bit cheated by the lack of resolution. This isn't so much an independent volume, as advertised, but
the first half of a larger book. I also felt parts of the story were a little thin; I never really got a sense of Arkus as a villain, so his gradual transformation wasn't as
unexpected as I thought the authors intended it to be. Overall, though, it's not a bad story, and I wouldn't rule out reading the second Lakeland Knight book. (Especially if
it ever becomes available for free...)
You might also enjoy:
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The Vlad Taltos series (Stephen Brust, Fiction - The wry tales of a human assassin and his dragonlike familiar in a wild, alien world)
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The Tales of Jig Dragonslayer (Jim C. Hines, Fiction - A cowardly goblin inadvertently becomes a hero, thrice over)
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Heroics for Beginners (John Moore, Fiction - Armed with a handbook of practical heroics, a prince sets out to foil an evil warlord)
The Unhandsome Prince (John Moore, Fiction - A determined girl frees a homely prince from a frog spell, but demands a better-looking husband out of the deal)
The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents (Terry Pratchet, YA Fiction - A clever cat runs a rat-piper con with talking rats and a boy, only to stumble across a town with a real rodent problem)
The Bartimaeus series (Jonathan Stroud, YA Fiction - In an alternate modern-day London, a wizard's apprentice rises to power with the help of a sarcastic djinni)
The Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Patricia Wrede, YA Fiction - Sick of being a proper princess, a girl in a fairy-tale kingdom runs away to live with dragons)
Forever After (Roger Zelazny, Fiction - After Good conquers Evil, four heroes must set out on a "reverse quest" to scatter the powerful magical artifacts that won the day)
Megamind (Single-Disc Edition)
(2010 movie DVD - Supervillian Megamind undergoes a personal crisis after defeating his nemesis, Metro Man)
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